However, Twitter later found that there were many problems with their system, and had to completely redo everything, to the point that '#newtwitter' now is just

However, Twitter later found that there were many problems with their system, and had to completely redo everything, to the point that '#newtwitter' now is just an interface that sits on top of their API. So maybe it would have actually been cheaper in the long run to have built a perfect API first, rather than a web service followed by an API.